Originally posted by Syno23

I got this message for Ayase, and as you know, no launch can be perfect, however...as ayase says:

I'm going to disagree with anyone who is saying that we've had a "bad launch". It's been fantastic. So many players logging in at once, and our servers are going strong.

A separate matter is the one about queues. There are queues, yes, and the ones of the most popular servers are long. One of the easier decision any development team makes when developing a game is what user amount to optimize it for. Aion was designed to run good with low, medium or high amounts of players, but as with any game -- not too many at the same time. That doesn't make sense from any perspective. The game would then be designed to cater best to masses of people present only during sub-1% spike time spans of the game's live service, and during these initial rushes of players logging in the concurrency would skyrocket if we didn't put some type of limit on it.

Our queues were implemented to nurture Aion's long-term health. We don't want to see a scenario where servers get beaten up, left shaking out of fear on the sidewalk, already during the first hour. We don't want to see a scenario where we put too many servers online resulting in a barren wastelands of empty worlds once the initial rush settles down. We're dynamic in the way we manage our servers, and we want to be open about this. If we see that queues are still long in a while, we'll look into opening up new servers; we'll look into tweaking maximum concurrency and maximum queue size limits. You will be able to log in - perhaps not right away - but the queues will settle down.

I've played MMO's for a long time, just as many of you guys have, and I've witnessed queues before. I'm an Aion player just as you and I'm witnessing them now. I know how annoying it is to wait, but I've also come to understand the importance of the queues. They're there in the beginning to make sure that your server's got a large, healthy population mid- and long-term, and that's an investment I'm personally willing to make.

(Source: http://www.aionsource.com/forum/1356447-post.html)

So, please understand that Aion's launch is optimal, plz don't be mad, be patient and thankful.

having played WAR and been bounced off of 3 dead servers -- I can definitely appreciate this point.

Originally posted by Wraithone

Originally posted by AgtSmith

That is not a response, that is spin.  No matter how you spin it the record number of pre orders customers they have been bragging about are now a record of customers who bought access but are getting 6 hour queues.  No matter how they try to spin it this is a big fail, and likely to get far worse before it gets any better.

 

But if I am wrong, NCsoft can change their advertising to say something like 'join record numbers of pre orders customers in waiting 5 or 6+ hours in queues'.  Of course, they won't do that because if people knew they would so mishandle the launch they would not have preordered and not buy the game for launch plain and simple.

 

Hey AS, long time no see. ^^  I suspect its a compromise between the tech types and the bean counters. The tech types know exactly how many resources(hardware/bandwidth) are required for a given population. The bean counters look at that number and shudder, and howl to management about the quarterly report and investor panic.  Balancing spike(early start and launch) loads is different than one is likely to see again(at least until an expansion or some such). Its not a decision for the faint hearted. If you have too few resources, you end up with lines 6-8 hours long(like Aion is seeing) If you use too many, you blow your profit model, and after the first two months may end up with entire realms with low populations(leading to merges and rumors that panic investors).  NCsoft looks like they came down on the too few side at the moment. Only time will tell what the consequences will be.

A fair way of looking at it but the thing is they spent the week going on and on about their record setting pre orders and then launch with a very anti record setting number of servers?  It just doesn't make sense, they knew they had massive pre orders, they even knew due to the early character create people where people would be going and that they would be inclined to want to get on that server not another.  That is what gets me with the 'it was planned' excuses - of course it wasn't planned or the early create would have not been done as that is what friends and guilds and all used to get their toons on the same servers with everyone else.  And for the record, for a good 3 to 5 hours all servers had massive queues, so the idea that one or two had queues and others didn't is largely false.

They also went live with a new website this same day and it is ripe with major problems and glaring inadequacies.  All in all it seems fairly obvious NCsoft just screwed the pooch on this and the throttling for balance stuff was just spin.  I hope they get their act together fast, otherwise Tuesday will be a bloodbath.

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Originally posted by madeux

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Originally posted by Keeper2000

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Originally posted by madeux

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Originally posted by Keeper2000

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Originally posted by madeux

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Originally posted by Keeper2000  

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But there are servers, right now, with no queue at all.... How is that NCSofts fault if everyone refuses to go to a less populated server?

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What exactly would you like NCsoft to do?  Magically create servers that can handle unlimited amounts of simultanious connections? 
There are open servers out there.  Aside from that, there's not a damn thing the company can do.
Some people are just determined to be upset, and they'll use whatever justification they have to.

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Are you accepting then there is a problem? And that long queues are a problem?
If you do, that is the first step to find a solution. I dont get paid to fix the problem in question.  Denial the problem wont help.
Now the problem... I had checked several servers and ALL had queues... the lowest was 600 aprox. people queued. So if we will all discuss how to "fix" queues on MMO release, lets try to keep it factual and dont lie. You said there are servers with no queues... then in another thread you said there was one with half hour... decide.
Imho, right now there are servers with low queue but there are none with no queu in them.
Someone in this thread spoke about the trade off between resources and money (I think the person used the "bean counting" hehe).  Can be that NC soft is lackign of resources?
I think the idea of cloning servers from Mythic was great... it did let network of people (guilds) to separate but... I think it was not well done... they did take too long to merge back servers when the queues started to dissapear (we all know the hsitory of that MMO).
Now, I am pretty sure if some of the people here posting got paid for working in a MMO company would spend the time necessary to think solutions. I dont believe in  "there are no solutions for this problem".
When you said "Some people are just determined to be upset, and they'll use whatever justification they have to." do you mean customers that paid and cant use the service? I am sure they will be pissed. Dont take me wrong I am playing it. I think the game is good quality (maybe not the best MMO I ever played but, for example, its stable... good use of instance to do load balancing, lag is low considering the amount of people running all over, etc).  But the queues are a mistake.
Can they open more Channels for example?
Can they clone server (a way of opening more Channels) and then merge in 2 weeks?
Can they buy better servers? Or the servers arent scalable in hardware? or wont make any difference?
Couldnt they locked the server more on the preselection?
Saying there are no solutions is problemic itself. Asking ME (one of the customers) for a solution is nice but I dont get paid for it. I have my opinions and I lack of information to find a solution. But I am sure again of one thing: customers bought something they are having problems to use.
 
 
 

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Every time I've checked I've been able to find a server open.  I've never had to wait to log into a character that I have already created.
There is no problem.  Just whiners.

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There's no hope for this guy, he thinks everything is great cause he is fine. No problem with you, no problem at all.

Originally posted by AgtSmith

Originally posted by Wraithone

Originally posted by AgtSmith

That is not a response, that is spin.  No matter how you spin it the record number of pre orders customers they have been bragging about are now a record of customers who bought access but are getting 6 hour queues.  No matter how they try to spin it this is a big fail, and likely to get far worse before it gets any better.

 

But if I am wrong, NCsoft can change their advertising to say something like 'join record numbers of pre orders customers in waiting 5 or 6+ hours in queues'.  Of course, they won't do that because if people knew they would so mishandle the launch they would not have preordered and not buy the game for launch plain and simple.

 

Hey AS, long time no see. ^^  I suspect its a compromise between the tech types and the bean counters. The tech types know exactly how many resources(hardware/bandwidth) are required for a given population. The bean counters look at that number and shudder, and howl to management about the quarterly report and investor panic.  Balancing spike(early start and launch) loads is different than one is likely to see again(at least until an expansion or some such). Its not a decision for the faint hearted. If you have too few resources, you end up with lines 6-8 hours long(like Aion is seeing) If you use too many, you blow your profit model, and after the first two months may end up with entire realms with low populations(leading to merges and rumors that panic investors).  NCsoft looks like they came down on the too few side at the moment. Only time will tell what the consequences will be.

 

A fair way of looking at it but the thing is they spent the week going on and on about their record setting pre orders and then launch with a very anti record setting number of servers?  It just doesn't make sense, they knew they had massive pre orders, they even knew due to the early character create people where people would be going and that they would be inclined to want to get on that server not another.  That is what gets me with the 'it was planned' excuses - of course it wasn't planned or the early create would have not been done as that is what friends and guilds and all used to get their toons on the same servers with everyone else.  And for the record, for a good 3 to 5 hours all servers had massive queues, so the idea that one or two had queues and others didn't is largely false.

 

They also went live with a new website this same day and it is ripe with major problems and glaring inadequacies.  All in all it seems fairly obvious NCsoft just screwed the pooch on this and the throttling for balance stuff was just spin.  I hope they get their act together fast, otherwise Tuesday will be a bloodbath.

Actually, your statement in red is largely false, because it only takes into account one side of the facts. From what I can tell, from asking on several of these 'OMG the sky is falling' threads is that the queue times seem mostly on the Asmodian side only. The servers that are showing Elyos over 50% do show some queues yes, but since those are few and far between, they haven't seen many queues at all.

The fact that a majority of large guilds from other games chose to populate the same 2-3 servers and all chose the asmodian side is what has caused a lot of this issue, not server capacity.

As for NCSoft throtalling for Spin purposes, man I hope I'm not on your server. If all you want is for everyone to be able to log into whatever they want, talk about an overload on one faction from the start. Take this for a test drive in your brain please. 2000 Elyos log into a particular server, 5000 Asmodian log into the same server. Now, just because we have a 50/50 split (10000/10000 per side) on the OVERALL population on it, does that mean there will be a balance to the PLAY on that server if those numbers get to log in? I'm thinking the abyss might be a wash for the Elyos everytime you let that go that way. Sure, Asmodians get a queue until the Elyos numbers come up, as there should be. Personally I hope they never change this - I want a balanced PvP game that doesn't rely on zerg numbers and the side with the most numbers wins. If thats what you guys want then...

I retract my earlier statement.  Not because of the EVE player.  Although EVE likes to say, we have 25k simultaneous users on 1 server.  In reality they can barely host a few hundred people in a sector without alot of lag.  The reason I retract my statement is that I forgot AION has 10 channels.  Each channel should be capable of holding 4k people which would make 10 servers a fine number for 400k pre-orders.

Originally posted by Cleffy

Although EVE likes to say, we have 25k simultaneous users on 1 server.  In reality they can barely host a few hundred people in a sector without alot of lag.

"In reality they can barely host a few hundred people in a sector without alot of lag."

That is your exact statement and I am offering you the opportunity to prove that true.

• Create a trail account in EVE.
  
• Make a Caldari character and fly to the Jita system. (Caldari gives you shortest path there)

There will be, at almost any given time of day, between 500 and 1,000 players in that one system.

If you can come back here and honestly say that you were experiencing a lot of lag in a system with 'barely a few hundred' players, I'll pay for the next two months of whatever MMO you are currently playing. However, if you discover that your statements are grossly incorrect, I would also like you to return and say so as well.

I won't even touch that 25k number because I don't think you'd believe me if I told you they regularly hit double that.

"In reality they can barely host a few hundred people in a sector without alot of lag."

It costs you nothing to find out if you're right or wrong. If you're right, you even get a couple months of MMO gaming on my dime.

Cheers!

Warhammer had queues, so people whined and they panicked and cloned servers. I was moved from 2 dead servers eventually. 

Once the population spreads out they'll increase the server capacity. Don't give into the whiners.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Originally posted by Cleffy

Although EVE likes to say, we have 25k simultaneous users on 1 server.  In reality they can barely host a few hundred people in a sector without alot of lag.

 

"In reality they can barely host a few hundred people in a sector without alot of lag."

That is your exact statement and I am offering you the opportunity to prove that true.

• Create a trail account in EVE.
  
• Make a Caldari character and fly to the Jita system. (Caldari gives you shortest path there)

There will be, at almost any given time of day, between 500 and 1,000 players in that one system.

If you can come back here and honestly say that you were experiencing a lot of lag in a system with 'barely a few hundred' players, I'll pay for the next two months of whatever MMO you are currently playing. However, if you discover that your statements are grossly incorrect, I would also like you to return and say so as well.

I won't even touch that 25k number because I don't think you'd believe me if I told you they regularly hit double that.

 

"In reality they can barely host a few hundred people in a sector without alot of lag."

It costs you nothing to find out if you're right or wrong. If you're right, you even get a couple months of MMO gaming on my dime.

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

Excellent points. I've seen Jita with more than 2000 pilots, and it was only a bit laggy.  I've also been logged in when Eve has had more than 50K on line. This from the wiki.

On March 15, 2009, Eve Online achieved a new record for the maximum number of simultaneous pilots online with 53,850 concurrent accounts logged on to the same server. This was the first full weekend after the release of the eleventh major expansion, Apocrypha, and its return to retail distribution on March 10th, 2009. Eve typically experiences the highest amount of users on Sundays and the peak player records have almost exclusively been broken on Sundays.[25]

Originally posted by Kaocan 

Actually, your statement in red is largely false, because it only takes into account one side of the facts. From what I can tell, from asking on several of these 'OMG the sky is falling' threads is that the queue times seem mostly on the Asmodian side only.

Not true, the queue would kick in before you even got to the character creation screen so it wasn't race specific.  Now perhaps if you already had a toon on a server a queue would come up for you verse someone else who had not made a toon on that server, or not of the queued race.  But since you could only make a max of 2 character in the early character creation this doesn't account for what I described.

Well, I don't know much about the spin, but its day 2 and I've yet to log into Aion.

Right now I've got a 2 hr 49 min queue, which means around 10:00 pm I'll be able to get in.  BFD

Funny, I picked up my pre-order copies today yet haven't had a chance to play.

Maybe tomorrow once people have to put up or shut up things will normalize a bit.

Originally posted by AgtSmith

Originally posted by Kaocan 

Actually, your statement in red is largely false, because it only takes into account one side of the facts. From what I can tell, from asking on several of these 'OMG the sky is falling' threads is that the queue times seem mostly on the Asmodian side only.

 

Not true, the queue would kick in before you even got to the character creation screen so it wasn't race specific.  Now perhaps if you already had a toon on a server a queue would come up for you verse someone else who had not made a toon on that server, or not of the queued race.  But since you could only make a max of 2 character in the early character creation this doesn't account for what I described.

I was ALWAYS able to find an open server.  Always.  Never once did I try to log in and find that I couldn't.  Never. 

Maybe you couldn't get in on the server you wanted... who's fault is that?  If it's full, it's full.  If you want in bad enough, just wait.  Otherwise, you could find another server. 

Originally posted by madeux

Originally posted by AgtSmith

Originally posted by Kaocan 

Actually, your statement in red is largely false, because it only takes into account one side of the facts. From what I can tell, from asking on several of these 'OMG the sky is falling' threads is that the queue times seem mostly on the Asmodian side only.

 

Not true, the queue would kick in before you even got to the character creation screen so it wasn't race specific.  Now perhaps if you already had a toon on a server a queue would come up for you verse someone else who had not made a toon on that server, or not of the queued race.  But since you could only make a max of 2 character in the early character creation this doesn't account for what I described.

 

I was ALWAYS able to find an open server.  Always.  Never once did I try to log in and find that I couldn't.  Never. 

Maybe you couldn't get in on the server you wanted... who's fault is that?  If it's full, it's full.  If you want in bad enough, just wait.  Otherwise, you could find another server. 

QFE

Ya its sad that the  club is full and your friends are in but its not the hosts fault. Around the corner ist just right the next club and its exactly the same music and they still have space left. Dont wanna ask ya friends to come over?

Not? erm kay ..please add yourself to the qeue

Is this a case of them trying to balance the servers? On Israphel I have an elyos character, never had a queue for it. On Triniel I have an Asmodian character and the only time I was able to get on was this morning before work. I got home just a bit ago and it's a 4 hour queue.

I can't honestly believe people are actually complaining about this. Now I did beta test Aion, I decided not to play it and got my money back from my pre order. However My friend is right now waiting in like just like everyone else to get into the game. He's not bitching or complaining no. He has plenty of stuff to do to keep him busy for hours even days more.

I have experienced the same thing happen in many games when FFXI first came out the servers kept crashing over and over again almost every 2-3 hours. The influx of players the first week was huge! So what did I do? I WAITED "GASP" Yes its called wait. It will NOT kill you to wait 24-48 hours more to play Aion. Yes you want the head start, yes you want to be some of the first to reach max level, and for what? So that you can speed run the entire game, skip most of the storylines, neglect reading the text get to level 50 in 3-5 weeks do a ton of pvp for a month and then complain because there is nothing to do? Please. Just sit tight and wait your turn. Honestly I still can't believe people are making a huge deal about such an insignificant issue.

NCsoft is a big company, not a little one like AV (Darkfalls creaters).  Having any queue is wrong, period.  They have no excuse.

This isn't a head start weekend.  It's a dead start weekend.

All the fluff and stuff about server  balance and population control is lovely  up until you add in the discussion about how many customers they are losing (never getting). 

I just can't muster up the enthusiasm to drop $50 and a monthly subscription after the performance challenges of open beta and this ludicrous queue fiasco on deadstart weekend.

Others are entitled to look at it differently but that's my view.

Jesus... still complaining about Q time??? ... so many people are playing w/o any problem... always some are unhappy no matter what a game company does.  A PvP game need a healthy population to go on with the game, if they don't enforce the rule, game will fail i.e. warhammer.  If Q time is too painful for some, maybe consider go to play Warhammer I heard there is no Q time at all :D

Well when play time is limited then yes long queues are a legitimate concern.

I have limited play time as well, I only play after work and I work 7 days a week.  I have no problem with long Q time personally :D

im good with quies but at least disable personal shops durring this period that way lines will move WAYYY faster

Yes I'm voicing my outrage about Q times.  It's absurd.  Why is it hard for you to wrap you're head around the concept that when busy people find time to play getting hit with a 2 hour wait time doesn't work?   Were I a subscriber, I'd view it as a breach of contract ... paid for service undelivered.  But since I won't be a subscriber at this then I'll just move along and shake my head in disbelief at the # of potential customers AION lost in September.   Another classic in the annals of product eff ups.

Originally posted by -Zeno-

NCsoft is a big company, not a little one like AV (Darkfalls creaters).  Having any queue is wrong, period.  They have no excuse.

Far be it from me to defend NCsoft(anyone who knows me, knows I'm not one of their fans...).  But they do tend to come down on the business side of things(look at the three MMO's they have pulled the plug on as an example). From the perspective of the Korean suits, it doesn't make *business* sense to over invest in hardware/bandwidth for spikes that will sort themselves out in a few days.  Believe me, I know how annoying lines can be. I can remember when WoW had ones hours and hours long.  Once the initial spikes smooth out I suspect things will get better. If they don't, that has implications and consequences of its own.

While I understand what they are trying to do, Its still not cool. Its the exact reason I left WoW, I dont pay for a game and expansions and a monthly fee to sit in queues for hours to play the game. All I am hearing here is be patient.... I spent 3 monrths in wow waiting every night anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours (most of the time, closer to the 2 hour mark) to get into the game. So sorry, I will not go through that again. Half of my guild mates have spent hours each night trying to get in and finally gave up because of actually having to go to work the next day. Tell me how the head start has helped them? Whats going to change when it goes live tomorrow? They and possibly me will still be waiting for hours in queues. Sorry, that just doesn't sound like fun to me.

When there are servers available without a queue, none of you have any right to complain.  You just picked the wrong server.  If they limited the number of people allowed on a server, you'd be complaining that you couldn't join that server... yet when they don't limit it and you end up with a queue, you complain about that.

The fact is, the complainers are whiners who are looking for a reason to be happy.  They're simply  being unreasonable.

I have still never had to wait to get on to at least one of the servers where I have characters.  Never.

Originally posted by madeux

When there are servers available without a queue, none of you have any right to complain.  You just picked the wrong server.  If they limited the number of people allowed on a server, you'd be complaining that you couldn't join that server... yet when they don't limit it and you end up with a queue, you complain about that.

The fact is, the complainers are whiners who are looking for a reason to be happy.  They're simply  being unreasonable.

I have still never had to wait to get on to at least one of the servers where I have characters.  Never.

So what your saying is, you have tried to log in, seen a queue and went to a different server and made characters so if you got a queue, you can just go play an alt. Eh, whatever. I am not an alt person. I start with one and I continue with it till I get bored and maybe try some others. That doesnt happen until I get way up there in levels though.

Whining or not, everybody still PAYED for this game, so if they can't play, then they have the right to complain. You can call it whinning if you want, you would be wrong, but you could do that.

I find it kind of amusing that you see it as being unreasonable. What is unreasonable about it? Its the luck of the draw on if you picked a server that isnt over populated. Did you think I was unreasonable in wow waiting for 3 months of queues before quitting? Considering there, Before they had this big rush on our server, we had never had a queue in over a year. So again, I dont think anyone is being unreasonable in wanting to play the game that they bought and are paying monthly fees for.